Urinary incontinence is a common problem suffered by many of us post both surgery and radiation therapy for prostate cancer. The degree of incontinence varies from no problem all the way to having no control of the urinary function. Men having surgery find that as time progresses post treatment, they do regain levels of urinary [...]
HIFU (high-intensity focused ultrasound) is one of the newer treatments for prostate cancer. Although not yet approved in the United States it has received a lot of press and growing popularity as a primary treatment option. There are a number of European countries already using it as a regular treatment modality and there are a [...]
The Department of Urology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, performed a retrospective study designed to evaluate the overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (DSS) in men receiving primary androgen-deprivation therapy (PADT) or salvage medical ADT (SADT) for prostate cancer. The study included men who were diagnosed and treated with ADT between July [...]
An article in today's New York Times about obtaining drugs under the compassionate use clause boiled my blood. I am not usually one without words, but this story has left me speechless, or wordless. I can not add anything to the story, it speaks for itself and makes me cry. Joel T Nowak MA, MSW
A study performed by the American Clinical Oncology Society and funded by the federal government was released on Thursday that demonstrated that ginger and ginger capsules taken a few days prior to the administration of chemotherapy significantly reduced chemo related nausea. Be aware that ginger ale and ginger cookies often contain only ginger flavor, not [...]
There is a new web site that will make finding a clinical trial specific for prostate cancer even easier. Not only can you search for trials, but now you can locate the trials by location (distance from your home zip code). Go to: https://web.archive.org/web/20170512051333/http://cancertrials4prostate.org/ or look for the link in the resource section of this [...]
I have returned from Michigan and again have the computer access and the time to continue sharing items relevant to our struggle. Investigators at the Duke University Prostate Center have indicated that cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, may reduce inflammation in prostate tumors, which might hinder prostate cancer growth. "Previous studies have shown that men taking statins [...]
Presented at EAU on March 23, 2009 The drug Denosumab has shown itself both easy to tolerate by patients as well highly able to increases bone mineral density (BMD) when compared with placebo in men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer receiving androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). The results of this multi-centre, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 study [...]
One of the unsettled debates in our advanced prostate cancer world surrounds the issue of continuous vs. intermittent hormone therapy (IHT). Traditionally, hormone therapy was continuous, or once you started you never stopped the treatment. As many of us know, hormone therapy is notorious for damaging the quality of life. Hot flashes, loss of libido, [...]
A small phase III, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trial of Gabapentin which looked at the Management of hot flashes in men on a hormone blockade (ADT) was recently completed and published in the March 2009 journal of the Ann of Oncology. One of the most common and bothersome side effects of a hormone blockade [...]
